Pump It Up NX2
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| Pump it Up NX2 | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Nexcade |
| Publisher(s) | Andamiro |
| Distributor(s) | Andamiro |
| Series | Pump it Up |
| Platform(s) | Arcade |
| Release date | January 21, 2008 |
| Genre(s) | Music video game |
| Media | Hard drive |
| Input methods | Dance pad |
Pump it Up Next Xenesis (or NX2 for short) is the 20th arcade game release in the Pump It Up series. It was released worldwide on January 21, 2008 after being made available in Mexico and Korea a couple months prior. As of April 2008 it has not yet appeared in some some Pump It Up markets, but is now appearing in many more locations.
NX2 is an expansion of NX with major differences. The 29 "New Tunes" from NX's Arcade Station have been added to their respective channels on the song wheel and replaced with 30 new tracks. The Korean version of the game has one more track, "Tell Me" by the Wonder Girls. This song was licensed only to Korea and therefore is not present in international releases. Two songs, Yahpp's "Solitary 1.5" and Hot Potato's "No Despair" are only available for play when using the game's proprietary USB stick. The game also includes five songs taken from Pump it Up Pro with new stepcharts created by Nexcade. NX2 also adds support for USB memory cards, which are used to save progress in WorldMax mode and can also be used for internet ranking. NX2 only supports its own proprietary USB drive which can be ordered directly from Andamiro in bulk or offered by the arcade.
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[edit] WorldMax
Aside from new songs and many aesthetic changes in the interface, the major innovation of NX2 is the USB system and the "WorldMax" station of the game. WorldMax is very different from anything previously seen in any music game in that it is reminiscent of a musical RPG found inside an arcade game. Using the game's proprietary USB system, players can play WorldMax while saving their own progress and unlocked features. Featuring eight separate worlds (Rootinia, Shantomia, Mirtain, Barharn, Harena, Morigin, and Cryomiston as well as the Prue Ocean) each complete with their own boss missions and even sub-bosses, players travel through 333 missions with various (and sometimes extremely unusual) requirements. Some later locations such as the Switch and Mystery Box add a major twist to the game, while the Warps found in each land let the player quickly travel between lands they have reached.
Players gain "miles" in the game's mileage system in each of the missions, using this mileage to alter aspects of their missions (such as the play level, speed, and a lottery system) as well as purchase unlocked songs in Special Station. Unlike NX's World Tour, WorldMax is a very personal experience for individual USB owners in that it serves as a sort of gamesave that tracks players' progress rather than the progress being a communal effort. The system also allows players the opportunity to continue their progress in any Pump It Up machine with NX2 installed.
The difficulty of WorldMax - and the game as a whole - has slightly gone down in favor of charts created for the fun factor rather than for difficulty and tech. Unlike the very harsh difficulty and unforgiving nature of World Tour, WorldMax grants players multiple chances per credit, allows greater freedom in choosing which songs to play, uses spending mileage to make missions easier, and focuses more on missions that make players have to think more than simply hit arrows. For example, many missions such as the "Hidden Parts" mission in Shantomia have several versions of its chart to confuse and challenge the player. With changes such as this, it appears that the game is going back to its "roots" in that it's focused less on difficulty, has its logo changed back to the original Pump It Up logo from the original games, and is focused more on traditional K-Pop.
[edit] Other changes
Other things that have changed in NX2 include:
3 songs per credit - unlike older versions of Pump, where you always had the opportunity to play 4 Arcade Station songs per credit depending on your bonus, the maximum number of songs playable in a credit on NX2 is 3. According to Andamiro, this was done due to requests from arcades that found that 4-song credits were too long. Training Station, Arcade Station, and WorldMax all allow 3 regular song plays per credit (with the exception of Remixes and Full Songs), while Arcade Station only has two songs by default, with the possibility of a third song with the same conditions as in the past. This change has been met with both optimism and dislike in the Pump It Up community, however it has proven to have the side effect of bringing in much more in terms of profits for arcades with many players, especially with the added replay incentive of WorldMax.
Expansion of Training Station - NX2's Training Station adds on to the twenty relatively simple lessons from NX with an additional twenty, this time expanding the depth of the tutorial to where the 40th lesson ends with training on some of the game's most difficult Nightmare charts. In later lessons, arrows become color coded to represent what feet should be hitting which steps. This is done to help players learn how to turn and twist in stepcharts properly. Arrows that are red are meant to be hit with the left foot, blue with the right foot, and yellow steps can be hit with any foot.
Arcade Station layout - NX2's layout in Arcade Station is very similar to NX's, however it's been touched up quite a bit. The song scroll layout is now reminiscent of Cover Flow, with far-left and far-right disc images being folded to the side. Each song now displays the machine's record score for every song on every mode when the song/chart is selected as well a displaying the calorie and oxygen consumption information for every chart.
Internationalization - Starting with NX2, Pump machines now support four language settings: English, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese. All four languages have complete language files in WorldMax as well as in Training Station and other areas where text is important, further catering to the various markets where Pump It Up has expanded. However, some international aspects of the game have gone back to the way they originally were, such as title screens for many new NX2 songs remaining completely in Korean, perhaps due to NX2's "returning to the roots" vibe.
[edit] Pump it Up NX2 Song List
Key:
- A - Game includes alternate song cut in WorldMax
- B - Playable with USB only
- C - Changed or new steps included
- K - Korean version only
- P - Crossover from Pro
- R - Revived song from a previous release
- T - Training Station only
- U - Unlockable
- W - WorldMax only
[edit] New Tunes
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[edit] Returning Music
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